Journal of Pragmatics最新文献_第6页

Toward a granular analysis of the discourse marker ti: in Tunisian Arabic 突尼斯阿拉伯语语篇标记语ti的粒度分析

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-30 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.09.006

Mohamed Jlassi

This study offers a granular analysis of procedural relevance by challenging the traditional view of discourse markers as performing a fixed procedural function. The analysis draws on a corpus of Tunisian Arabic supported by a speaker survey to examine the pragmatic effects of ti: across diverse communicative contexts. Focusing on the understudied yet pervasive discourse marker ti: in Tunisian Arabic, the paper relies on corpus data and speaker insights to disambiguate its complex functional load. The findings reveal that the frequency of ti: stems from its high degree of multifunctionality: it serves diverse conversational roles, influences the trajectory of interaction, and reflects the dynamics between discourse participants. The paper argues that this multifunctionality is rooted in ti:’s multicategorial status, enabling it to perform multiple communicative tasks across different discourse domains. As such, ti: exemplifies a “multiperformative” discourse marker—an element that simultaneously encodes various pragmatic functions with minimal speech effort. This efficiency points to broader implications for the typology of discourse markers, both in Arabic and crosslinguistically. Ultimately, the study underscores the need for a more nuanced, crosslinguistically grounded model of procedural meaning—one that accounts for multifunctionality, categorical flexibility, and interactional economy. Such an approach, situated within pragmatics, opens the door to productive interfaces with other linguistic fields.

本研究通过挑战语篇标记具有固定程序功能的传统观点，对程序关联进行了细致的分析。该分析利用突尼斯阿拉伯语语料库，并通过对说话者的调查来检验ti：在不同交际语境中的语用效果。本文以突尼斯阿拉伯语中尚未充分研究但普遍存在的话语标记语ti：为研究对象，利用语料库数据和说话者的见解来消除其复杂的功能负荷。研究结果表明，ti：的出现频率源于其高度的多功能性：它服务于不同的会话角色，影响互动轨迹，反映话语参与者之间的动态。本文认为，这种多功能性的根源在于它的多范畴状态，使它能够在不同的话语域执行多种交际任务。因此，它是一个“多行为”话语标记的例证——一个以最小的言语努力同时编码各种语用功能的元素。这种效率指向话语标记的类型学更广泛的含义，无论是在阿拉伯语和跨语言。最后，该研究强调需要一个更细微的、跨语言基础的程序意义模型——一个能够解释多功能、分类灵活性和互动经济性的模型。这种方法位于语用学的范围内，为与其他语言学领域的生产界面打开了大门。

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引用次数: 0

Interpreting verbal irony in Mandarin Chinese: The role of prosody and proficiency among L2 learners of Chinese 汉语反语的翻译：韵律和熟练程度在汉语第二语言学习者中的作用

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-26 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.09.004

Fengming Liu

This study examines the intersection of second language pragmatics and prosody, focusing on L2 Chinese learners' ability to interpret ironic intentions through prosody. Irony, as a form of non-literal language, relies on cues such as prosody for interpretation. For L2 learners, recognizing these prosodic cues is crucial to disambiguating meaning and avoiding communicative breakdowns. The study employs a cross-sectional design, including intermediate (n = 29) and advanced (n = 23) L1 American English speakers learning Mandarin as a second language, as well as native Chinese speakers (n = 60). Participants completed an experimental interpretation task designed to assess the impact of proficiency and prosody on interpreting speakers' intentions. Stimuli included utterances delivered in three prosodic tones: ironic, enthusiastic, and neutral. Results showed that proficiency enhanced learners' ability to interpret irony through prosody, with advanced learners outperforming intermediate learners. Advanced learners showed greater sensitivity to ironic tones, while intermediate learners relied more on literal meanings and overlooked prosodic cues. These findings highlight the developmental trajectory of L2 learners’ pragma-prosodic competence, and shed light on future pedagogical practice.

本研究探讨了二语语用学和韵律学的交集，重点研究了第二语言汉语学习者通过韵律解读讽刺意图的能力。反讽作为一种非文字的语言形式，其翻译依赖于韵律等线索。对于二语学习者来说，识别这些韵律线索对于消除歧义和避免交际中断至关重要。该研究采用横断面设计，包括中级（n = 29）和高级（n = 23） L1美国英语使用者学习普通话作为第二语言，以及母语为汉语的人（n = 60）。参与者完成了一项实验性口译任务，旨在评估熟练程度和韵律对口译说话者意图的影响。刺激包括三种韵律语调的话语：讽刺、热情和中性。结果表明，熟练程度提高了学习者通过韵律解读反语的能力，高水平学习者的表现优于中级学习者。高级学习者对讽刺语气表现出更大的敏感性，而中级学习者更多地依赖于字面意义，而忽略了韵律线索。这些发现突出了二语学习者语用韵律能力的发展轨迹，并为未来的教学实践提供了启示。

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引用次数: 0

The palm-up open hand gesture across language modalities: A comparison of German and DGS (German Sign Language) 不同语言形态下手掌向上张开的手势：德语和德国手语的比较

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-26 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.008

Sandra Debreslioska , Anna Kuder , Pamela Perniss

It is a well-established fact that the use of gestures is a ubiquitous feature of communication with language. This is true for both spoken and signed languages. However, while in spoken languages, gestures are produced in a different modality than speech (visual versus vocal/auditory, respectively), gestural elements in sign languages are produced in the same modality as sign (both are visual). This study investigates whether this difference in the modality of language production influences the discourse-pragmatic functions that gestures fulfill. We focus on palm-up open hand (PUOH) gestures and examine their frequency and contexts of use in German and DGS (German Sign Language) narrative productions. We find that German speakers and DGS signers use PUOHs similarly often, but differently on the functional level. Speakers deploy PUOH gestures for information structural purposes (in particular, to signal new(er) information), while signers use PUOH gestures on a discourse management level (in particular, to signal the ending of narratives). We argue that this cross-linguistic and cross-modal difference reflects the differing affordances that spoken versus signed languages offer, thereby revealing new insights into the language-gesture relationship, and the multimodal nature of language more generally.

手势的使用是语言交流的一个普遍特征，这是一个公认的事实。口语和手语都是如此。然而，虽然在口语中，手势以不同于言语的方式产生（分别是视觉和声音/听觉），但手语中的手势元素以与手势相同的方式产生（都是视觉的）。本研究探讨了语言产生形态的差异是否会影响手势的语用功能。我们专注于手掌张开（PUOH）手势，并检查其在德语和DGS（德国手语）叙事作品中的使用频率和语境。我们发现德语使用者和DGS使用者使用puoh的频率相似，但在功能层面上有所不同。说话者将PUOH手势用于信息结构目的（特别是表示新的（er）信息），而手语者在话语管理层面使用PUOH手势（特别是表示叙述的结束）。我们认为，这种跨语言和跨模态的差异反映了口语和手语提供的不同启示，从而揭示了语言-手势关系的新见解，以及更普遍的语言的多模态本质。

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引用次数: 0

Relevance beyond the implicated proposition 超越隐含命题的相关性

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-22 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.09.003

Elly Ifantidou

What makes an input worth attending to from the mass of competing stimuli? In relevance-theoretic terms, perceivable experience (an utterance, a sight, a sound, a memory) is relevant to us when it connects with available assumptions to make a worthwhile difference to our representation of the world. For example, the news that “Cardiff orchestra cuts Russian composer from concert” (The Guardian) may make little worthwhile difference to my representation of the world, while “Russia invades Ukraine” (The Guardian) is far more likely to attract my attention, and lead me to compute the consequences (in the form of a range of inferences) that are likely to be most worthwhile for us.

Because all cognitive processing is effortful, an input becomes maximally relevant at the smallest possible processing effort, as predicted by Relevance Theory. The question is: What else, apart from a set of salient contextual assumptions, can impact on the expended processing by accelerating the interpretation process while expanding its rewarding effects?

I present evidence from neurolinguistics suggesting that pragmatic inference involves a series of steps that are not constrained by cognitive processes alone, and I argue that the maximum benefit from the most relevant stimulus available to an individual at a time is not exclusively propositional. The spontaneous formation of assumptions in the process of inference is often interspersed with spontaneous activation of emotions and images, those experiential resources which free up our limited cognitive resources. In defense of this view, I discuss examples of metaphor and mirative evidentials, and how non-propositional objects may be represented in an expanded notion of implicated content which would then be more open-ended and more nuanced than previously thought.

是什么让一个输入值得从大量的竞争刺激中得到关注？用关联理论的术语来说，当可感知的经验（一个话语、一个景象、一个声音、一个记忆）与可用的假设联系在一起，对我们对世界的表征产生有价值的影响时，它就与我们相关。例如，《卫报》（the Guardian）报道的“卡迪夫管弦乐团将俄罗斯作曲家从音乐会中除名”这条新闻，可能对我对世界的描述没有什么有价值的影响，而《卫报》（the Guardian）报道的“俄罗斯入侵乌克兰”则更有可能吸引我的注意力，并让我计算出可能对我们最有价值的后果（以一系列推论的形式）。因为所有的认知处理都是需要努力的，所以正如关联理论所预测的那样，一个输入在最小的处理努力下就会变得最大程度地相关。问题是：除了一系列显著的上下文假设，还有什么可以通过加速解释过程同时扩大其奖励效果来影响扩展的处理？我提出了来自神经语言学的证据，表明语用推理涉及一系列不受认知过程限制的步骤，并且我认为，在同一时间，个人可以从最相关的刺激中获得的最大利益并不完全是命题性的。在推理过程中自发形成的假设往往穿插着情绪和图像的自发激活，这些经验资源解放了我们有限的认知资源。为了捍卫这一观点，我讨论了隐喻和镜像证据的例子，以及非命题对象如何在隐含内容的扩展概念中被表征，这将比之前认为的更加开放和微妙。

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引用次数: 0

Speech prosody and pragmatic scalar inferences: Divergent cognitive strategies in adults with high and low levels of autistic traits 言语韵律与语用标量推理：高、低水平自闭症成人的不同认知策略

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.09.002

Yuhan Jiang , Ting Wang

Background

Given the communicative challenges associated with autistic traits (ATs), individuals with higher levels of ATs can sometimes make certain pragmatic inferences, such as quantifier scalar implicatures. However, it remains unclear whether they can effectively integrate prosodic cues when drawing these inferences.

Methods

This study examines scalar quantifier interpretations and reaction time (RT) among Mandarin-speaking adults using computer-based Picture-Sentence Judgment & Selection Tasks, considering prosodic cues and cognitive abilities. Samples included 18 adults with lower (11F, 7M) and 27 with higher (19F, 8M) levels of ATs.

Results

Our study found that when prosodic cues were present, low AT individuals showed greater delays in response times but were less likely to change their interpretations. This suggests heightened sensitivity to prosodic cues and stronger conviction in their initial judgments. Additionally, while prosodic focus affected cognitive factors in both groups, low AT individuals relied more on Theory of Mind (ToM), whereas high AT individuals relied more on Executive Functions (EFs).

Conclusions

Higher levels of ATs are linked to greater difficulty with pragmatic scalar inferences, but compensatory cognitive strategies offset this. This study highlights the role of prosodic focus and the distinct cognitive strategies used by individuals with varying levels of ATs.

考虑到与自闭症特征相关的交际挑战，具有较高水平自闭症特征的个体有时可以做出某些语用推断，如量词标量含义。然而，在进行这些推理时，他们是否能有效地整合韵律线索尚不清楚。方法采用基于计算机的图句判断和选择任务，考虑韵律线索和认知能力，研究普通话成人的标量量词解释和反应时间。样本包括18名ATs水平较低（11F, 7M）的成年人和27名ATs水平较高（19F, 8M）的成年人。结果我们的研究发现，当韵律线索存在时，低AT个体在反应时间上表现出更大的延迟，但不太可能改变他们的解释。这表明他们对韵律线索更敏感，对最初的判断更有信心。此外，尽管韵律焦点对两组的认知因素都有影响，但低AT个体更依赖于心智理论（ToM），而高AT个体更依赖于执行功能（EFs）。结论较高的ATs水平与较高的语用标量推理难度有关，但代偿性认知策略抵消了这一影响。这项研究强调了韵律焦点的作用，以及不同水平ATs个体使用的不同认知策略。

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引用次数: 0

#greenCNPC, #CleanerEnergy: Pragmatic use of self-praise metaphors in Chinese corporate discourse on Twitter/X # greennpc， #CleanerEnergy: Twitter/X上中国企业话语中自我表扬隐喻的实用主义使用

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-19 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.09.001

Ya Sun, Pan Zheng, Chenle Li

In an era of globalized corporate communication, Chinese corporations face a pragmatic challenge of balancing cultural norms of modesty with the imperative of self-promotion on international social media platforms like Twitter/X. While metaphors offer an indirect strategy to moderate self-praise, their role in facilitating communication accommodation, particularly in cross-cultural contexts, remains understudied. This study uses the qualitative corpus analysis of tweets to investigate how two leading Chinese petroleum corporations strategically employ metaphors on Twitter to frame self-praise. This study identifies fourteen high-frequency metaphors (green, clean, friend, partner, home, smart, warm, high, low, lead, progress, advance, protect, and record) across four source domains (object, human, journey, and competition), encoding four key attributes of corporate self-praise: propriety, capacity, normality, and tenacity. Crucially, they modulate self-praise intensity via three tiers of pragmatic explicitness: explicit self-praise metaphors directly highlighting positive qualities; conventional self-praise ones aligning with cultural norms; contextual self-praise ones deriving positivity from situational framing. The analysis reveals how self-praise metaphors facilitate communication accommodation through enhancing interpretability, balancing interpersonal control, facilitating discourse management, and fostering emotional empathy. This study highlights metaphor as a dual pragmatic tool of mediating self-praise indirectness and communication accommodation and offers actionable strategies for enterprises to navigate global discourse.

在企业沟通全球化的时代，中国企业面临着一个务实的挑战，即如何平衡谦虚的文化规范与在Twitter/X等国际社交媒体平台上进行自我宣传的必要性。虽然隐喻提供了一种间接的策略来缓和自我表扬，但它们在促进沟通适应方面的作用，特别是在跨文化背景下，仍未得到充分研究。本研究采用推文的定性语料库分析，考察了两家中国领先的石油公司如何在推特上战略性地使用隐喻来构建自我表扬。本研究确定了14个高频隐喻（绿色、干净、朋友、伙伴、家、聪明、温暖、高、低、领导、进步、前进、保护和记录），涵盖了四个来源领域（对象、人、旅程和竞争），编码了企业自我赞扬的四个关键属性：得体、能力、正常和坚韧。重要的是，他们通过三个层次的语用明确性来调节自我表扬的强度：明确的自我表扬隐喻直接强调积极的品质；符合文化规范的传统自我表扬；情境性自我表扬从情境框架中获得积极性。分析揭示了自我赞美隐喻如何通过增强可解释性、平衡人际控制、促进话语管理和培养情感共情来促进沟通适应。本研究强调隐喻作为中介自我赞扬间接和沟通适应的双重语用工具，并为企业在全球话语中导航提供了可操作的策略。

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引用次数: 0

“Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions “现在不行”：孩子们在网上梳理互动时的抵触情绪

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.013

Nuria Lorenzo-Dus , Craig Evans

In this paper, we examine children's resistance strategies during online grooming interactions, specifically the different ways they use facework to counter groomers' advances. The study identifies types of children's discursive resistance based on established politeness and impoliteness taxonomies (Brown and Levinson, 1987; and Culpeper, 2016; respectively), and quantifies the tendency for children to produce these based on evidence from a specialist corpus of 80 online grooming chatlogs, shared by UK law enforcement for research purposes. The study also examines how children perform resistance discursively as part of a dynamic interactional process. Our research finds that children produce resistance that is fairly evenly balanced between politeness and impoliteness-based types. The majority of politeness-based resistance is oriented to positive face needs, reflecting children's personal/romantic relationship goals, while children's negative politeness-based resistance is attributable to adult-child/manipulator-victim power imbalance in online grooming interactions. The majority of impoliteness-based resistance is also oriented to positive face needs, primarily acting against these through the strategy ‘Ignore, snub’, while children's negative impoliteness-based resistance tends to take the form of blocking. This is the first study to systematically identify resistance types and their discursive realization in a sizeable corpus of real online grooming chatlogs. Its findings help inform preventative technologies to counter the globally escalating problem of technology facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse.

在本文中，我们研究了儿童在在线梳理互动中的抵抗策略，特别是他们使用面部表情来对抗梳理者的不同方式。该研究根据既定的礼貌和不礼貌分类（Brown和Levinson, 1987; Culpeper, 2016；分别）确定了儿童话语抗拒的类型，并根据英国执法部门为研究目的共享的80个在线梳理聊天记录的专家语料库中的证据，量化了儿童产生这些行为的倾向。该研究还考察了儿童如何在动态互动过程中以话语方式进行抵抗。我们的研究发现，孩子们产生的抵抗在礼貌和不礼貌两种类型之间相当均衡。大多数基于礼貌的抵抗是面向正面的面孔需求，反映了儿童的个人/恋爱关系目标，而儿童的消极礼貌抵抗是由于在线梳理互动中成人-儿童/操纵者-受害者的权力失衡。大多数基于不礼貌的抵抗也以积极的面子需求为导向，主要通过“忽视、冷落”的策略来对抗这些需求，而儿童基于不礼貌的消极抵抗则倾向于采取阻挡的形式。这是第一个系统地识别抵抗类型及其在一个相当大的真实在线梳理聊天日志语料库中的话语实现的研究。其调查结果有助于为预防性技术提供信息，以应对技术助长儿童性剥削和性虐待的全球升级问题。

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引用次数: 0

Negotiating truth and relevance: A new typology of English rising declaratives 谈判的真实性和相关性：英语上升陈述句的新类型

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-17 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.010

Johannes M. Heim

Rising declaratives have been a prolific test bed for investigating the contribution of sentence-final intonation to the interpretation of assertive speech acts. In the past, this contribution has almost exclusively been described as a qualification of the speaker's commitment to the truth of the proposition. In this paper, I argue that we can only incorporate the full variation in uses of English rising declaratives if we expand conversational negotiations to include negotiations of relevance. Returning to the established insight that qualified commitment grounds in the avoidance of the risk of losing face, I propose that speakers not only avoid commitment if uncertain about propositional truth; they also avoid it if the relation to the question under discussion is unclear. In addition to accounting for the traditional divide between inquisitive and assertive uses of rising declaratives, the proposed expansion can also incorporate incredulous and narrative uses, which are void of any uncertainty and still come with a sentence-final rise. The latter seeks to resolve an epistemic clash; the former suspends the negotiation to add further information pertaining to the question under discussion. The proposed typology rests on the analysis of rising declaratives elicited in a Map Task study. To illustrate the variation in use conventions, I draw on the analogy of the negotiation table and frame the notion of relevance by situating this negotiation in the question-under-discussion framework.

上升陈述句一直是一个多产的实验平台，用于研究句末语调对断言言语行为的解释的贡献。在过去，这种贡献几乎完全被描述为对说话人对命题的真实性的承诺的限定。在本文中，我认为如果我们将会话谈判扩展到包括相关性谈判，我们才能在英语上升陈述句的使用中纳入全部变化。回到既定的见解，即有条件的承诺基于避免丢脸的风险，我建议说话者不仅在对命题真理不确定时避免承诺；如果与正在讨论的问题的关系不清楚，他们也会避免使用它。除了解释传统的探究式和自信式上升陈述句用法之间的区别之外，拟议的扩展还可以包括怀疑式和叙事性的用法，这些用法没有任何不确定性，并且仍然带有句子结尾的上升。后者试图解决认识上的冲突；前者暂停谈判，以补充有关讨论中的问题的进一步资料。提出的类型学基于对地图任务研究中引出的上升陈述语的分析。为了说明使用惯例的变化，我借鉴了谈判桌的类比，并通过将这种谈判置于讨论中的问题框架中来构建相关性的概念。

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引用次数: 0

Conventionalization of politeness and questions under discussion in pragmatic inferencing: Interpreting scalars in interpersonal contexts 礼貌的惯例化与语用推理中讨论的问题：人际语境中标量的解释

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-15 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.012

Jun Zhang , Yan Wu

This study investigates how scalar expressions are interpreted in interpersonal contexts. Prior research suggests that weaker scalars (e.g., some or youxie) may serve as polite hedges that suppress scalar implicatures (SIs), especially in face-threatening acts. However, findings remain inconclusive, often neglecting the role of discourse structure and hearer-based inferences. Drawing on a frame-based model of politeness, we argue that politeness is not inherently encoded in scalar statements but emerges from hearers' inferences shaped by contextual expectations, particularly questions under discussion (QUDs) and conventionalized response strategies. Across three experiments in Mandarin Chinese, we first elicit the QUDs associated with scalar utterances, then examine conventionalized speaker responses to these QUDs, and finally assess hearers’ interpretations of scalar utterances. Results reveal that politeness-based interpretations, which can suppress implicature derivation, emerge primarily when the utterance is judged to serve a face-mitigating function, especially in contexts where the QUD highlights a stronger, more face-threatening alternative. By contrast, SIs are more likely to be derived when the speaker is perceived as aiming to be truthful, particularly when their utterance deviates from conventionalized expectations for indirectness. These findings challenge traditional speaker-intention-based accounts and support a hearer-driven, discourse-sensitive approach to politeness and pragmatic inferencing.

本研究探讨标量表达在人际关系中如何被解释。先前的研究表明，较弱的标量（例如，some或youxie）可能作为礼貌的限制，抑制标量含义（si），特别是在威胁面部的行为中。然而，研究结果仍然不确定，往往忽略了语篇结构和听者推理的作用。根据基于框架的礼貌模型，我们认为礼貌并不是固有地编码在标量语句中，而是从听者的推断中产生的，这些推断是由语境期望形成的，特别是讨论中的问题（QUDs）和常规的回应策略。在三个普通话实验中，我们首先引出与标量话语相关的qud，然后检查常规说话者对这些qud的反应，最后评估听者对标量话语的解释。结果表明，基于礼貌的解释，可以抑制含意推导，主要出现在话语被判断为具有减轻面子功能的情况下，特别是在QUD强调更强、更威胁面子的情况下。相比之下，当说话者被认为旨在诚实时，特别是当他们的话语偏离了对间接的传统期望时，更有可能衍生出si。这些发现挑战了传统的基于说话人意图的说法，并支持听者驱动的、话语敏感的礼貌和语用推理方法。

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引用次数: 0

IF 1.7 1区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Pragmatics

Pub Date : 2025-09-05 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.011

Heidi Puputti, Iira Rautiainen

引用次数: 0